


types of ghost stories

by afearsomecritter (jsaer)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode 4 spoilers, Ghosts, M/M, Supernatural Elements, UnDeadwood Mini-series (Critical Role)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22076128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsaer/pseuds/afearsomecritter
Summary: He thinks he might be dead. That he keeps waking up where he was killed. He wants to be surprised. He wants to be wrong.
Relationships: Reverend Matthew Mason/Clayton Sharpe
Comments: 11
Kudos: 70





	types of ghost stories

**Author's Note:**

> so I realized that I haven't written a ghost story in a while and the discord consists entirely of enablers (shoutout to LoveWithAGirl being my main enabler in this one)

\--

The dirt is cold. 

It’s dark.

-

The dirt below is cold.

He needs to open his eyes.

-

He wakes up in the dirt. The ground is cold under him, and the moon is high.

He thinks he blinks. 

His chest hurts. 

He lifts a hand-

He wakes up in the empty street. The cold dirt feels like it's leeching into his bones, and the moon lights everything silver.

He blinks, sluggish, a low grunt of pain escapes him because his chest hurts.

He lifts an unsteady hand-

He jolts awake on an empty street. The night air is cold and the ground is not better. The moon hangs bright and silver in the sky.

He thinks he's woken up before.

His chest hurts and he ignores it, curling instead on his side. 

The ground beneath him is smudged dark, but dry. He drops his hand to the ground-

He wakes up on his back. The moon hasn't moved.

-

He’s not sure how long it takes before he’s upright. He knows not to touch his chest (even though it burns, even though it hurt like he’s been sh-) and not to touch the (red) earth below him.

He doesn’t (won’t) put two and two together. 

The world is strange and blurred, smudging like charcoal one moment and diamond sharp the next. He blinks, trying to clear his eyes and the world shivers and he sees people on the empty street and bright daylight and he’s standing on a busy street in front of a building and he looks up to see cloth strung across the façade.

The faded banner says _Gem Saloon._

Something pricks at the base of his skull, he knows this place it’s-

Decent whiskey and a corner to lurk in skittish bartender but not unfriendly four strangers at a table four friends at a table a gun in his face with the wrong name written on a bullet and what would’ve been betrayal sinking low in his gut were it not for the resignation because he k n e w

He wakes on his back, staring up at the moon. 

He just lays there for a while, feeling dead lungs inhale and exhale and the phantom beat of a pulse. 

-

He thinks he might be dead. That he keeps waking up where he was killed. He wants to be surprised. He wants to be wrong.

(also he’s not actually sure what his name is he’s been clayton for a long time but the gun was for amos but the tears had been for clayton and there shouldn’t have been any of those so maybe he should be amos-)

He thinks, half hysterically with impossible bile rising in his throat, that maybe he feels cold when he lies in the dirt of the road is because his bones are bare and buried under frozen earth-

Amos scrambles to his feet, skin crawling and convinced that if he wakes laying down again he will be swallowed into the grave he knows must exist (might exist he’s a liar a murderer they might well have thrown him to the pigs and vanished like the nothing he’s been) but it has to he thought he heard the Reverend begin to pray he wouldn't do that for-for-

The church, Clayton thinks, I need to go to the church. The thought notion _purpose_ wipes clean everything else. The world shivers and sharpens around him, and he steps forward. 

-

Amos is standing in a church. He’s not sure how he got there. It looks vaguely familiar. He’s in a familiar church and he doesn’t know why just that he needs to be and he can’t go back to where he was. The man in the church is familiar, broad shoulders in a leather coat he had given him and he might know that face sheet white and laughing and flat and cold and smiling and wide eyed from shock and fear. Clayton is standing behind the man in the-not in the church? It’s small and there a stove and it’s okay because the man is still there (what’s his name) leather coat no longer on his shoulder and neither are the blacks and he thinks it’s the same person (what’s his n a m e eyes and scar rendered in ink wanted for desertion and murder what’s his-) so it’s okay.

The man (Ma-) doesn’t seem to know he’s there that’s okay he doesn’t like eyes on him and the preacher sees a lot and pretends he doesn’t cause he hides a lot too so maybe it’s okay if he Sees him. The ma-(Matth-) is at the stove cussing at a pot and that’s funny cause-he’s using a different voice, lower and gravel but safe gravel not smothering earth and he’s the same person Clayton knows and Amos thinks he’s like him so it’s okay. He is beside the man (Matthe-) and he’d not realized that smell been missing (ever existed) until now heavy scent of stew and warm skin and sweat and cotton and new wood and char and s a f e-

“Matthew,” Clayton says.

Matthew drops the ladle. 

-

The preacher can’t see him but he can hear him and can maybe feel him clayton keeps reaching out and tapping and touching shoulder arm bare hands death has made him bolder than life and he’s cold and not sure he’s real and matthew stopped flinching after the first few times and now tries to reach back (anchor m-) and it helps. 

He wakes in the church, curled up on the sofa in a room he’s never seen. 

He wakes in the church, slumped against the pulpit and listening to Matthew speak. 

He wakes somewhere else, sitting on the floor and leaning against a chair, Matthew’s thigh warm against the side of his head. 

-

Matthew talks to him, rambling narrations about what he’s doing like he can tell Amos isn’t always sure what’s going on and he sings sometimes, sings sermons and stupid ditties and other things and sometimes Clayton just leans against his back to feel his voice and heart reverberating in his chest and tries to remember what that felt like humming in his own and watches gooseflesh prickle across the back of Matthew’s neck but he doesn’t twitch.

(it just feels cool he says like he knows that clayton’s asking just coolness and a steadily increasing weight solidity you used to be an icy breeze in the stree-and he stops there and clayton wonders if the moon had been moving after all he doesn’t can’t ask how long-)

Faces are hard. Voices are hard. Everything too sharp and blurry like vaseline coating shattered glass but he thinks he sees Miriam, when he sits next to his preacher in a building he doesn’t think about. He thinks he sees Arabella, when he is wandering around the church (he is learning the knots and gnarls and paint chips in the wood methodical sight and touch). He does not reach for them and his preacher says nothing.

(“it’s a bit chilly in here,” she says, “i’m working on it,” matthew replies)

-

He’s not sure when Matthew starts to see him but it’s okay Matthew is steady (like a gravestone) and his gaze is safe and Amos keeps close cause Matthew is warm against the chill of the gr-Matthew is warm like the stove should be and the other people he sees are warm too and he thinks he could pull it into himself if he just reached out but his hands looked strange when he started and he made someone scream and he didn’t like that so he just leans against his preacher and he doesn’t hurt him so it’s fine he’s always been simple in his needs and now is even simpler just warm and a voice and kind eyes.

(there’s something that comes near his preacher sometimes and he _hates it_ and shoots it with guns he doesn’t usually have and it laughs and it leaves them alone until he has to shoot it again and it laughs and laughs but it _leaves them alone_ and he is cold rage and screaming and little else until his preacher calls for him-)

-

“Clayton,” his preacher rumbles one maybe day. He thinks it’s light out. The air where he’s sitting is in sunlight so it must be warm and he can see dust dancing in the beams like gold dust.

“Clayton Sharpe,” his preacher repeats, and Amos looks up to see him extending a hand. Matthew had been speaking earlier, murmuring something in what he thinks is Latin and Matthew's hand is bleeding and that’s not right he shouldn’t be-

Clayton grasps his hand.

-

He wakes slowly under a blanket, sunlight glowing gold through his eyelids. 

He is warm, and he is breathing. is heart is beating, and a hand is holding his. 

He opens his eyes.

\-----


End file.
